


School Life in the Valley

by Whynoteh



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-17 07:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17555696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whynoteh/pseuds/Whynoteh
Summary: High school AU. Our cast are seniors in high school, but what's with all these transfer students? Obviously we know why, and that why is teenage shenanigans as our heroes try to survive too many advanced classes, early mornings, lunchtime starvation, Cardin being an asshat, sports, minimum wage jobs, and our favorite, teenage romance. Enjoy.





	1. Chapter 1

Red lights stared Ruby in the face, muffled static noise turning to sharp electronic screeching. The red lights began to make discernible patterns, letters maybe, before finally reading as numbers, numbers a waking Ruby thought hard to understand. 6:00 it read, screams it said. Her hand slapped the snooze button of the alarm clock, gray eyes staring back at the glow now in silence. 

"Oh, wait..." she whispered, clearing her throat. "School... that's... today?" A low groan of realization.

Today was the first day of the school year; Wednesday the 30th of August, Snoqualmie Valley of Washington state, U.S.A.

Rolling lethargically out of bed, Ruby slipped her small pale feet into her fur slippers, and left her pitch black room. In the hallway, Ruby bumped into a equally dead Yang, both mumbling a incoherent greeting to each other. In unison, they dragged their feet to the bathroom, where they brushed their teeth, brush their hair, and Yang applied makeup. Taking turns for the bathroom alone, they then got dressed and grabbed their backpacks, meeting downstairs in a dim kitchen for breakfast. Ruby, wearing a plain, red, zip up hoody with a black t-shirt and dark gray cargo shorts, poured herself a glass of milk to go with her kellogg's cereal. The kind with strawberry bits. Yang ran down in her black and white motorcycle jacket and dark brown cargo pants, tearing through the white refrigerator for anything she could eat in the next two minutes.

"I'm going to be late," Yang whispered, her drawer opening and closing much louder than her speech. 

A yawn. "Isn't your zero period... uh..." Ruby stared off as the words drifted ever slowly closer to her mind. "Ah, weight training, right?"

"Ugh... uhm... you're right, it doesn't really matter, does it?" Yang asked herself mostly, shoving a single slice of bread in her mouth and preemptively shredding some string cheese to shovel in a minute. "Anyways, I'm off."

"Taking your bike?" she yawned again.

"Yeah."

"Have fun in the cold then."

"Ugh," Yang gracefully grunted, leaving through the front door.

Her sister gone with the roar of her 650cc bike, of which she didn't have a license for, the fifteen year old plugged her red Dr. Dre Beats headset into her silver iPod shuffle and started up her Foo Fighters playlist. Zoning out as she ate her breakfast, it took away to finally finish. Ruby slipped on her tan, canvas backpack, her black, rectangular watch, and her black combat boots with the red laces. A chuckle. "So much red" she humorously mused, then left on her own bike. A seven speed. A blue bicycle.

Pedaling out of her long driveway, she looked back at her house. It was half remodeled, beige paint flaking on different sections of the house and tools scattered about in her yard. Her home was a farmhouse surrounded by small wheat fields on the outskirts of North Bend, and it took her about half an hour to get to her high school. One minute in she realized she forgot her knife, and turned around to pedal back. Running up to her room, she grabbed her folding survival knife with it's four inch blade, a relatively large knife for a girl her size that could barely hide in her large short's pocket. The school was a no gun or knife zone, but she alway kept it in case a wild animal, or more likely a high person, attacked her on her bicycle ride there or back.

Returning to her ride, Ruby shivered violently for several minutes in the dark blue light of morning before her work out kept her hot and sweaty. About forty-some minutes later, she was at her high school, Mount Si High.

"Hey!" called out a familiar, yet of course groggy voice.

Chaining her ride to the bicycle rack, Ruby cranked her head hard, her head set slipping off, to see Jaune approaching her from the parking lot, dressed in his usual black bunny hoodie and jeans with a faded blue backpack. Unceremoniously shouting back, she asked, "Jaune? I thought you had weight training with Yang?" 

A sigh then a loud and infectious yawn, his jaw stretching as he answered in shame "I slept in. What time is it?"

Checking her watch, she told him "7:33. First period starts at 7:40. Wow..." Her sleeve fell back over the black time keeping device as she stood to follow him up the three entrance steps leading inside.

"Wow what?"

She shook her head. "Oh, nothing, I just took too long to get here. I need to workout more, especially if I want to keep my status in track." The warm air of the commons area submerged them, Ruby and Jaune rolling up their hoodie sleeves in tandem. Ruby bore bare arms, Jaune bore wrinkled orange sleeves of his undershirt. "Ewww, school..." she moaned. The school was already busy with students and teachers, walls of white with black, gray, and red markings representative of the school's colors, and clothes running the black and white gambit with a heavy influence of brown, red, and blue. Mostly Carhartt, Northface, and Pac-Sun like brands. Western Washington was usually after all either cold or wet, or both.

"I know right, I'm not ready either," Jaune yawned in reply. "I mean, AP physics first period, that's messed up man." They both ignored the commons to the right and hugged the left wall, white and rough, passing through the left archway where the hallways made a 'y' shape with the entrance.

Ruby paused. "Uh, our class is this way." She lead them into the left hallway. "Naw man, math is my strong class, I even read ahead in the last week; I'm just not looking forward to waking up way too early every day and... essays."

"You think Cardin will be in our classes again?" Jaune asked as he opened the door to their classroom.

Ruby managed one step before spotting Cardin in the back of the room. "Possibly, and by possibly I mean very yes."

Following behind her, the blonde rolled his eyes and whispered "Goddammit."

The science rooms on this side of the school all had grey speckled linoleum floors and eggshell walls, shiny black tables clustered on one half of the room, the half where the white board and teacher's desk lived. On the other half, lab stations with sink resided. Ruby and Jaune took refuge at the desks at the front of the room and closest to the door, opposite of the windows and teacher's desk. "Cheese and crackers, these seats will never be comfy," Ruby groaned about the silver frame and red plastic seat and backing chairs, both of them dropping their backpacks against the legs of the table they chose. Filling the two seats on their side of the table, both facing the wall with the white board, Ruby and Jaune enjoyed flopping forward, burying their faces into their arms to catch some shut eye before class started.  
The first bell at 7:35 rung in no time, the rest of the students filtered in, usually loudly for whatever reason. At 7:40, the door opened and in entered the physics teacher, a middle aged man with a black mustache. Ruby and Jaune, now up and awake, recognized him, but didn't have a name associated with him. Having wasted no time, the teacher sat himself on a high chair behind his computer and began roll call. With the first name read off, Ruby and Jaune shuffled in their seats to look at the rest of the class for the first time, and now noticed two very peculiar persons sitting to the right of Jaune at the adjacent adjoined table. Two beautiful girls, one of fairer skin and blonde hair that bordered on silver and a scar across her eye, and the other of a scarlet pony tail and green eyes, tall too. They waited for them to answer to the roll call, the taller red head answering to "Pyrrha Nikos" and the smaller scar eye to "Vice Schnee".

"It's actually Weiss" she mildly snapped back in an accent that was dangerously close to being a valley girl accent, pronouncing her name Weiss as in 'why-(i)ce'.

Ruby leaned closer to Jaune and whispered inquisitively, "Isn't weiss german for white? Why the 'why' pronunciation—?"

The blonde shushed her. "I don't know," he whispered back.

Once the teacher finished roll call, he briskly strutted to the righthand whiteboard with a black dry erase marker in hand and wrote out what was presumably his name, 'Dr. Watts'.

"Uhm, teacher" Jaune raised his hand, his face curious, "Is that Watts or Vatts?" At least three kids giggled to themselves.

Before the teacher could respond, Ruby jabbed Jaune with her elbow, whispering "you literally just told me not to ask about names," while grinning earnestly, holding in her own giggle.

"Watts" answered the teacher cooly with what could be aptly described as a disgusted face.

"Yeah Jaune," Cardin spoke clearly from the back, "like the sentence, 'watt in the world makes Jaune so much of a loser?'." Chuckles intermixed with groans sounded off.

“Cardin, was it?” asked the adult. “I don't have a problem with bullying in my classroom, but I will not tolerate such underdeveloped puns and jokes. I expect at least third degree burns while in my classroom.”

While Jaune sneered back at his bully, Ruby asked her friend "wait, burns by fire or burns by insult?" with an odd note of arbitrary fear.

"If he meant the former, he would be in jail, Ruby– Ruby! This is physics, not chemistry."

"Fair enough."

The teacher spoke again. "Now before anything else, first day of school an all, we'll be going over the syllabus, but I am running late on schedule and need to print them first, so I'll be back in a couple minutes, just don't burn the place down while I'm gone, okay? Okay." 

With him gone, the class burst into conversation, though it was all the same topic. While Pyrrha and Weiss chatted together, everyone else postulated who the two new girls were and what their deal was, Weiss and her eye scar a prominent point. No one had the courage however to approach them about it. Except Jaune. Except Jaune after Ruby stomped his toe on accident and pressured him into talking to them, too shy herself.

"Uhm, hi, uh, I'm Jaune Arc, nice to meet you," he stuttered as his right hand danced from a weak wave to a shaky hand shake. 

Pyrrha, the one sitting on the left of the table and therefore next to Jaune, took a moment to register the gesture, returning it happily with "And I Pyrrha Nikos, nice to meet you too."

"So uh," Jaune continued, pulling his hand slowly away to try and appear less meekly, "you guys don't look familiar, you just move? I mean, did you just move here from somewhere?" Ruby leaned forward and nodded her head.

“Are you Greek?” she blurted out.

Jaune elbowed his friend, whispering in anger over his shoulder, “Ruby! You can't ask people if they're Greek!?”

"Do you not recognize her?" Weiss recoiled, like Ruby she leaned forward to see past her larger partner.

"No, you don't have to—" Pyrrha started, but was largely ignored. Jaune nodded 'no' while Ruby looked on at Pyrrha with a lost look.

"Pyrrha Nikos! You know!? The Judo finalist of her age group?" Both of them nodded 'no' this time. "Pyrrha Nikos! She played Elizabeth on Semper Sight!"

"Oh!" Jaune exclaimed, looking to Ruby now, "That's that really popular show that just ended, we've heard of it, but it was on HBO, so..."

Ruby returned his gaze, "...So, we never saw it." She looked to the other two, apologizing with "We don't do tv subscriptions. Sorry."

"Oh, that's perfect!" Pyrrha smiled, stopping herself and repeating, "I mean, that's fine. Real quick, this is AP physics right?"

"Yeah, why?" answered Jaune normally.

"Ruby, right? You look a little... young?" Pyrrha was evidently scared of guessing her age.

"She's fifteen. Skipped two grades. Dad's a teacher. He teaches at one of the middle schools. Actually, is he still teaching at Chief Kainem?" he asked his friend.

A shrug. "I don't know, they changed the boundaries again. What about you Weiss, where you from?"

Pyrrha immediately recognized the same reluctance she had herself in Weiss when she was asked that question. With what seemed like a deflated tone she introduced herself. "I just moved here from New York... my father is a CEO of Microsoft..."

Ruby looked down to her lap, light reflecting onto her face from the screen of her apple product, her silver iPod shuffle. She whispered to herself with comically furrowed brows and pursed lips, "daughter of Microsoft, I guess we can't be friends..."

In the neighboring classroom, Nora and Yang who sat together discussed their class mates in the same row but opposite side of the room. Emerald and Mercury, the latter with dark brown basically black hair but the former with dyed pistachio green hair, the former getting a lot of attention from her peers.

"Emerald and Mercury," started Nora, "I mean I get that we're in chemistry and all, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets material names..."

"Yeah, seriously. Actually, what if her parents are huge Sonic the Hedgehog fans..."

"Plus, where did they even come from?" inquired Nora, hand turned, palm to the ceiling.

"I don't know, the boundaries changed again though. Maybe they're from a different district."

Halfway across the school in the first period art class, a blonde transfer student by the name of Sun found himself being glared at on both sides of his table. To his left, a black haired girl named Blake, and to his right a girl named Neo. Across their hallway was the computer room for first period AP Computer Science, where another transfer student contemplated the cliche of asians being good with computers. Ren contemplated why the transfer student's name was Neptune.

For the next two periods, Ruby found alot of the people from her first class in the next two, plus alot of transfers and people who just moved in. Second period AP U.S. History with Dr. Oobleck, Ruby noticed another new girl except with a cast on her arm, Blake, whilst Pyrrha and Weiss sat in front of her. Yang, Jaune, Ren, and Nora shared creative cooking. Sun and Neptune regular physics, Neo, Mercury, and Emerald Ceramics. Third period, Ruby lead Pyrrha and an increasingly annoyed Weiss to AP Calculus. Ruby counted another new kid, Neptune, who sat behind Ren and a sleeping Nora. Jaune repeated himself from earlier, "goddammit", except a little louder when he saw he had Cardin with him in regular U.S. History. Sun, Neo, and Emerald hung at the back of the class.

Fourth period PE began with Jaune confiding with Ruby and Ren, "seriously, what the hell, three out of four classes so far, Cardin's in them."

Ren coughed. "Four out of five. Cardin is also in zero period with me and Yang... and you. Sorry Jaune." The blonde rested his face in his hand, fingers drawing a close on the bridge of his nose and pinching. A sigh.

"Never mind that," Ruby with curiosity, "do you see how many new kids are in this class." 

Nora and Yang pulled up behind them, Nora pointing, rather rudely if one considered the pointing rule, "It's crazy! I count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 new kids." 

"A quarter of the class, so odd," Ren commented.

Ms. Goodwitch's strong command for order silenced the entire gym at once, save the squeaks of shoes on the lacquered floor boards. Starting at one corner of a court, she called out each name in alphabetical order and gave them a place to stand for roll call, choosing the spots as intersections of floor markings that in the end formed a grid pattern made of humans. Of the names she read, the first was "Jaune Arc," Jaune getting the first spot, then interspersed amongst the next 31 students went as thusly: "Blake Belladonna; Mercury Black; Ren Lie; Pyrrha Nikos, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Emerald Sustrai, Neo Torchwick, Nora Valkyrie, Neptune Versailles, Cardin Winchester, Sun Wukong, Yang Xiou Long." Everyone after Pyrrha being bunched together at the end.

Unlike the other classes, teacher Glynda had her students do their class work on the first day. "Ten laps, now!" she shouted, her whistle resting against her bosom unused.

Ruby dashed to the head of the pack as quick as she could, a grin spread across her face. Much to her surprise however, right behind her and then quickly passing her was Ms. Schnee, sneering at her as she passed. Sun, Mercury, and Emerald did the same. The passing part, not the sneering. 

"Whoa whoa whoa, not today" Ruby chuckled, and put serious effort in this time, sprinting back into first. Her speed a little much for the enclosure of the gym, she jumped right to kick off of the retracted bleachers, then did a low and partial wall run to keep momentum while staying on the outside of the lap box line. The others sped up to compete.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the class pack, just behind Pyrrha, Jaune looked to his friends, Yang, Ren, and Nora and remarked "try-hards," in reference to the sprinters. "Wait, when do we get lockers? Is she marking us down today for not having PE clothes?" Jaune panicked ever so slightly.

"Pfft, of course silly," laughed Nora, "Glynda will mark us down for not using our lockers just before she assigns us lockers."

"That she will indeed," mumbled Ren to himself, already slightly panting.

"Lunch sounds so good right now" diverged Yang, still starving. 

Come lunch, loud and crowded, Ruby and friends claimed the table in the commons closest to the entrance, the table protected by the raised ground of the walkway between the commons and the main office and guarded by a pillar on the other side. Slamming down their trays, Nora got to start the conversation, though not to the reaction she hoped. "In the lockers, you guys should've seen it, that Pyrrha chick has huge boobs!"

"Goddammit Nora" giggled Yang, shaking her head.

"Goddammit Nora" whispered Jaune, shaking his head.

"Nora, you can't say these things" lamented Ren, shaking his head while rubbing his face with both hands. Ruby ignored everyone so she could scarf down her pizza and fry wedges.

"But she's totally right" admitted Yang, "she's very gifted in the rack department." Yang lightly cupped her own breasts and shook them once.

Ruby spit out her food, some of it hitting Jaune across from her, and punched a laughing Yang in the arm. "Don't touch yourself at school! Why would you even do that!?" she half shouted.

"Well," Yang began, "somebody once told me—" before she was interrupted by Jaune.

"That the world is going to roll me?" he asked, head turned and eyes squinted.

"He's not the sharpest tool in the shed," added Ruby, a single finger directed skyward to make a point.

"Yeah your looking kind dumb with your finger and your thumb," Yang sang, now following the tune.

Ruby and Jaune joined her, the three of them finishing strong, "in the shape of 'L' on her forehead..."

They all shared a laugh while Yang's face sobered up into a distinct form of disappointment. “Shit, now I can't remember what I was going to say.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to ask,” exclaimed the blonde boy, “did you guys sign up for soccer already?”

The three girls nodded affirmatively. Yang crumpled up one of her napkins and flicked it at Jaune, hitting him in the neck. “Scooooore,” she guffawed, “But I think our first day is tomorrow.”

“You mean practice?” asked Ren, a Ruby caked in pizza grease nodding 'yes'. “Why isn't it today?”

“I don't know,” admitted the blonde girl, “I just skimmed the online announcement. Ew, Cardin.”

Her friends looked to her, and she gestured behind them towards the center of the cafeteria just underneath the skylight with all the flags hanging in a bunch, filtering the sunlight, or at least 'cloudlight' for today. Pyrrha and Weiss were being crowded by all forms of people asking about them and whatnot, but they predominately paid attention to how Cardin seemed to be hitting on Pyrrha. He was leaned over her on one side, his hand propping his body against the table.

“Jesus, could he be more schmarmy?” growled Jaune, clenching his fist and shaking it at his food.

“To be fair,” Ruby spat out some of her food as she spoke, “I prefer schmarmy Cardin to like... I don't know, could you imagine having some edge lord in a trench coat in our school, or worse yet, someone with a fedora?”

“Hello, my name is Christian Slater, and I carry a .44 to school, aren't I cool?” replied Jaune.

“Oh!” jumped Nora, “Thank you for reminding me! So I finally saw Heathers a few days ago...”

“Finally,” echoed Yang and Ruby in unison.

“...Yeah, and is it just me, or does it feel like Veronica was almost as bad as what's-his-face?”

Ren sipped at his chocolate milk. “She was an accomplice.”

The other three of the party threw wedge fries in dismissal of the thought.

For fifth period, Ruby had her second class with Jaune in chemistry, which was in the same classroom as physics and Dr. Watts taught this one too. Sun was monkeying around in the back and Cardin was flicking pennies into Jaune's hood.

“Goddammit,” repeated the boy.

Yang journeyed through the 'dungeon' to get to the end of the school for auto shop, Mercury already seated. On the second floor, Nora and Ren groaned to find Pyrrha, Weiss, Blake, and Neptune in their AP language arts.

“The transfer students are taking over!” fumed Nora.

For the final period, sixth period, Ruby, Yang, and Jaune high-fived each other when they walked into regular language arts together, while in the same class, Sun awkwardly waved at the Neo girl that he had a couple of other classes with already. In regular history just down the hall on the second floor, Nora pointed Ren's attention to Mercury who shared another class with them.

The day finally over, the five compadres met in front of the main entrance, outside by the bushes. It was loud and crowded, hundreds of students chattering as they walked passed to be picked up or wait for the buses. The random honking from teenagers with fresh licenses didn't help the cheerful noise pollution either. And for a moment, the sun actually peaked through the clouds.

“Well I don't know about you guys,” began Jaune, “but I'm ready to smash for the rest of the day.” A passing girl gave him a dirty look.

They laughed, shooting embarrassed looks to the girl. “I'm down,” said Yang. Ruby nodded in agreement.

“Or should we get food first?” Nora asked the group, but mostly Ren.

He shrugged. “We could order pizza.”

“Sounds like a plan. Our place, right?” Ruby offered. “I mean, we still have all the controllers.”

“We better get going then before the busses clog up traffic.” Yang departed without a goodbye and ran for her motorcycle. Ruby walked over to the bike rack and unhooked her bicycle.

“I can order it on the way there,” said Ren, pulling out an old Nokia brick phone. All of them jogged over to Jaune's hold ford pickup truck, a dirty brick red with rust spots scattered about it. It only had the one bench seat where Jaune, Nora, and Ren sat, while Ruby threw her bike in the truck bed and jumped in. She opened the lock box with one of her favorite horse blankets in it and laid down to conceal herself. Any cop looking in the truck bed would see a blue bicycle and an innocuous Mexican patterned green blanket tucked in front of the wheel well. They hadn't been caught yet, and didn't plan on stopping anytime soon.

Within the next 6 minutes, Jaune pulled up on Yang and Ruby's house. Walking in the front door, they could hear Yang shouting through the walls. “How much did they say it would cost!?”

Nora replied in kind, “17.65!”

“Kay!”

Yang pulled a twenty and two one's from their 'food money' jar, a jar that their father put a regular allowance in so his daughter's could feed themselves.

“Do we want CPU's!?” asked Ruby from the living room, Super Smash Bros already booting up.

Ren and Nora sat down on the sable couch with flaking fake leather to a mighty 'fumph', taking up their regular positions. “Heh,” scoffed Ren, “If you don't want this to be a massacre, yeah.”

“Pfft,” started Jaune, root beer can in hand, “'hur-die-dur, my name is Ren, I won one local tournament, hur-die-dur, ya' better start kissing my feet, love me'.”

Before long, pizza and chicken wings arrived and the teenagers were well into their game, shouting and laughing abound as they complained about Cardin and the exploding transfer student population. Everything was more or less normal now, but they were not aware of their future as seniors, and how this year would be unlike any of the ones before it.

-End Chapter 1-


	2. Chapter 2

The first week of school never had any learning, just syllabuses and teachers fumbling with student's names. It was only in the next week when the magic began. For Yang and Nora in their first period chemistry, that magic was the art of fire, fire and burning things.

“So according to Mr. Ironwood, we put the compound onto the wet stick, put it over the bunsen burner, then record the color of the fire,” Yang read through the lab handout, Nora already hooking up the glorified candle also known as a bunsen burner.

“How much goes on the stick?” the ginger asked, mentally prepared for an underwhelming amount of fire to be had.

“Just dab the end in the bottle, it says.”

The two girls looked to each other, mischief in their eyes.

“Well...”

Yang opened the box of sticks and pulled a handful. “It doesn't explicitly say 'one' end of a stick.”

Nora shook her head. “And who's to say what the 'end' of a stick is?”

Like criminals, they looked over their shoulders, spotting their teacher Ironwood helping out another group. “Let's do it!” they whispered excitedly in unison.

The blonde grabbed around a dozen plain popsicle sticks and 'wetted' them in the sink while Nora turned up the burner. Mercury and Emerald leaned over their lab kit to give worried glares at the two girls. Yang sprinkled the copper compound over the sticks.

“Okay, I actually want to see this,” Mercury told his lab partner. They waddled over.

“You ready?” the blonde asked the ginger.

Nora giggled. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Yeah, stupid question. Here goes.”

Sticking the powdered popsicle sticks into the steady flame, an eruption of green sprouted from Yang's toy, and the four teens laughed into their arms and hands at the mystifying spectacle. It didn't last too long however as Yang got distracted by the smoke coming off of it, her sleeve drifted into the bunsen burner.

A panicked collection of 'ah', 'ops', 'oops', 'crap', 'quick', and 'water's filled their corner of the room as they flailed about to turn on the sink, turn off the flame, and destroy the evidence of potential arson.

“What's going on?” Ironwood inquired, leaning menacingly over the much smaller teens.

On the second floor, AP history with Oobleck was just closing up. Blake sat dejected in her corner of the room with an empty journal of notes and a cast on her right arm. She stood up with a heavy sigh, slung her backpack over her good arm, and made her way through the labyrinth of seats to the door. She didn't make it much farther than that when Pyrrha caught up to her.

“Hello there!” the redhead greeted her with an uncommon amount of enthusiasm and a wave.

Blake hunched up and pulled ever so slightly away. “H-h-hello?” The black haired girl had learned from her life in Seattle that if someone approaches you with such gumption, they wanted something. Usually money. Or they were really weird. Or they wanted you to sign a petition. She kept her guard up. “Can I help you?”

“What? Oh, no, I was actually thinking of the other way around.” Pyrrha's smile shone so bright, it hurt to look at.

Blake looked the other way. “Yeah? You're a doctor?”

“Heh, no, here.” Pyrrha held in front of them two pages of notes. “I realized you can't take notes, so I wrote copies. This one's yours.” The paper traded hands and Blake's expression traded skepticism for surprise.

“Oh! Uhm, I... heh, I don't know what to say. Thank you?”

“Don't mention it. Say, you are in my AP LA right? I can do the same for you while your arm is... you know.”

The introvert started sweating. “Oh no! You really don't need to, that's so kind of you but, but I'll get by, you don't have to worry about it. Thank you though.”

“No I got it,” Pyrrha retorted happily, “I write all my notes twice anyways so I can... cement the content. I'm just giving you my spare.” It was a lie, but Blake couldn't quite tell either way.

“Well if that's the case... I guess that would be awesome, thank you. Your name was... Pyrrha, right? Greek?”

They hit the stairs down and lined up on their right side, as to allow people on the left to go up passed them. “Yep, and you're Blake, correct?” Pyrrha barely caught Blake's affirmative nod from the corner of her eye. “Well nice to meet you Blake.”

“Likewise.”

“I guess I'll see you in three periods.”

Blake chuckled, somewhat uncomfortably. “I guess so, see you then.”

A light drizzle slicked the soccer field. Few actually minded, but Glynda had the wonderful idea to personally pair up each player and have them run passing drills, and Ruby regretted her coach's choice.

“Ruby!” cried Weiss, her voice long passed the point of grating on not only Ruby's nerves, but most of the other soccer team members. “Pass the ball to me faster! Do you want to be intercepted?” The rich girl kicked it back as she maintained her jog.

“If I do, you're gonna slip!” she argued, taking the ball back under control, getting it in front of her while not running over it and tripping.

Weiss groaned. “Just do it!” Others groaned when the echo of 'don't let your dreams be dreams' sounded in the backdrop. Probably one of the drama kids.

“Fine!” Ruby put more of her body into the kick, and sent it skidding to her partner.

“Good–” is all Weiss managed to get out as she directed the ball, slipped one foot in front of the other, curtesy of the slicked ground, and went flying right shoulder first into the turf.

“Oh no,” Ruby muttered to herself sarcastically with a heavy dose of fake panic, “It's almost as if exactly what I said would happen, who knew?” She heard the laughs of her teammates that were watching.

“Ugh!” Weiss shouted, picking herself up and brushing the black rubber pellets of the turf off her jersey. “Why are we playing in the rain!? This is ridiculous!”

Ruby laughed as she folded her arms. “It's Washington, it's always raining.” She started to walk away to get a drink.

Petty as she was and unhappy and being made the fool, Weiss scowled ferociously at the underclassmen, arms crossed with shallow contempt. Feeling cheeky, she made a impressively precise shot, launching the ball at Ruby. It hit her square in the lower back.

Ruby stumbled forward with a delicate, graceful, “Blegh!”


End file.
